POETIC (HA!) REVELATIONS (aka: Tag! You're It!)

I WAS recently brought back to my high school days and what I admit is (was) my utter misunderstanding of poetry by Lady Wordsmith, a very imaginative person who needed to translate for me some of her beautifully written works.

Basically, my thing is: I didn't "get it." How is speaking in rhymes and riddles and making imagery and hidden meaning and not saying things directly the method of choice to communicate feeling and life and thought?

The poem I most enjoyed in my school days was The Cremation of Sam McGee. Followed closely by Three Blind Mice.

Of course, I have now been saved from that starkly black and white world, although I still couldn't tell you the difference between a limerick and a pin prick. Cut me some slack! I write sports for a living! I'm a Jocko Journalist, not Edgar Allen Poe!

I now fully realize that poetry is to writing what Da Vinci was to my stickman drawings. I can draw a four-legged dog or The Last Supper or Mona Lisa too, but which is going to be more artistic and creative?

Anyway, Lady W (http://ladywordsmith.blogspot.com/) has recently tagged several of us in a stimulating game of revelation.

So, to wit:

I am thinking about:
What my kids are going to grow up to be
And in a sense asking the same about me
More than halfway through, a tad off kilter
It's changing times, I'm stuck on tilt(er...)

I said:
The turtle can't be the hare. Pace isn't everything.

I want:
Whatever I need to happen, happily
Good things I lost to be found again
Bad things I found to be lost again

I miss:
Having my feet on solid ground
Having my head on my neck instead of sometimes up my ass
Intense feeling and purpose and passion
Maxwell Smart and the Cone of Silence

I wish:
1. Bush would go away already
2. I could be in India again
3. I didn't feel so stagnant (sometimes)
4. I was playing ball or some other sport this year
5. We'd let the Middle East sort out their own shit
6. We'd stop B.S.ing about the "terrorist threat." It's our own creation because we won't do No. 5
7. I could be driving down the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia
8. I could be pushing a giant boulder down a cliff on "Mike's Mountain" in Newfoundland and saving my brother from falling over the same cliff

And with each wish I wish,
That they all come true and that I get more

I hear:
Voices giving me choices that I sometimes choose to ignore

I wonder:
Why some people dig far too deep
Why some people don't dig at all
Why we let ourselves be consumed by shallow mass messages

I regret:
Doing some of the things I did in a blind trance
Getting some of the things I thought I wanted
Losing some of the things I should have had

I am:
At a crossroads
Trying to read a half-burned map

I dance:
Not nearly enough
But when I do,
To life's loveliness:
In the faces of my kids and family and friends
And caring, feeling feminine faces and forms

I sing:
Too quietly, in the shower
While my guitar gently weeps
Because I don't play it enough
For its liking or mine

I cry:
When I see men being emotional
And overcoming great odds or difficulties
With feeling and fight and passion;
When I think of my dad
And the life he has had

I make with my hands:
Loving grasps for my kids
120 words per minute on a keyboard
Sickly little stickmen

I write:
For a living
But also to live
And communicate my thoughts and feelings best

I confuse:
Myself
My ex, I'm sure
My intensity with my expectations of the intensity of others

I need:
A whole bunch of stuff besides this, but...
Contentment;
To DO the things I only talk about

I should:
Become more of the kid I was
Regain confidence, honesty, zest and
A belief that I always had

I start:
Things I don't have the commitment to finish

I finish:
Things I didn't have the balls
Or foresight or intention to start